Ne'er-do-wells *rolls eyes*
Tech support scammers use denial of service bug to hang victims
Tech support fraudsters have taught an old denial of service bug new tricks to add a convincing layer of authenticity to scams. The HTML5 bug allows sites to chew up a mountain of processor capacity, causing browsers to hang. Scammers deploy the few lines of code needed to trigger the bug, hang browsers and then display a …
COMMENTS
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Monday 7th November 2016 11:59 GMT Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese
Bug
I'll admit that I'm not up to the level of caffeination required for a Monday morning, but the sample code shown doesn't look like a bug to me - it just looks to be something which will do stuff and tie up CPU cycles.
Malicious code, yes, but I don't see how this would be categorised as a bug
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Monday 7th November 2016 14:09 GMT e^iÏ+1=0
Wanky story
"The most likely target of these scams are millennials, according to Microsoft research last month that found that age group are far more likely to fall hook and sinker for the cons than greybeards.
This could be thanks to the proliferation of blue screen of death tech support scams on popular torrent sites like Kick Ass Torrents and The Pirate Bay."
This looks very much like cut and paste journalism from this esteemed organ:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/20/millennials_easier_bait_for_tech_support_scams_than_baby_boomers/
"The proliferation of tech support scams on torrent sites could suggest millennials are more likely to encounter the ruses, though this is not mentioned in the report"
Incidentally, the aforementioned 'Kick Ass' may have been offline for some time.
Hence, an onanistic article.
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Monday 7th November 2016 15:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
I have a little side hobby of messing with these scammers. I'll collect phone numbers and get them to connect to VMs with all sorts of nasty surprises. Used some third-party software to launch GNAA's Last Measure (a browser-crippling shock site with all sorts of nasties) whenever they open event viewer or cmd.exe. Voice changers to pose as female or so they won't recognize my voice after multiple calls, throwaway skype and gmail accounts, leaving nasty pr0n on the screen, the list of tools for ruining a scammer's day is endless.
Sure, it's an indicator that I have no life, but every minute that I tie up their phones is a minute that they're not ripping off people that don't know any better. And it's quite hilarious.